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Originally Broadcast: August 9, 2006

Errors and Omissions

Who owns the rights to a play, a song, or a work of art? How important and fragile is the authorship? These and other issues of intellectual property rights begin to be revealed in, “Errors and Omissions,” a novel by Stanford Law Professor, Paul Goldstein. “Errors and Omissions,” follows the story of Michael Seeley as he locates a World War Two era Polish refugee who is the author of a screenplay that has the potential to make a huge amount of money not only from the movie rights, but also from the sale of associated paraphernalia. Goldstein, who began writing fiction at the age of twelve, hopes now, fifty years later that readers of his first full length novel will carry away the sense of the fragility of authorship, when an artist creates a work out of thin air. I spoke with Paul Goldstein from his office at Stanford University and began by asking him to define intellectual property.

Paul Goldstein recommends, “Aspects of the Novel,” by E.M. Forster.

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